Any lingering suspicion Jakob might have had that the Red Army was a force of reluctant, resentful soldiers press-ganged into service had been finally dispelled in those early weeks of the year. Stories habitually told by local Kuomintang officials in Chentai that the Communists recruited their troops by surrounding a village and cutting off the ears of any man who refused to join them finally lost their last vestiges of credibility. With scarcely an exception, the young Red Army men in Jakob’s hearing chattered excitedly about fighting for their homes and their land and ultimately defending their country against Japan.
If further proof had been needed of the marchers’ devotion to their cause, it would have been provided by the ragged ten- and eleven- year-old beggars and orphans who were recruited to serve as Young Vanguards in every township through which the column passed. Racing endlessly back and forth along the column, these scrawny, grinning Chinese boys carried messages and medicines, fetched water and fuel, and took down cottage doors to make beds for the soldiers at overnight stops. Dressed in oversized caps and captured Kuomintang greatcoats reaching to their ankles, they did the work of unpaid orderlies with unflagging energy and enthusiasm. They were referred to affectionately by the troops as Little Red Devils and some of the longer-serving boys bore their share of ugly wounds. Even under fire Jakob had seen the Little Red Devils carrying out their duties with the same roguish cheerfulness, striving to outdo in visible displays of courage the troops who were only a few years their senior. During the quiet marches after dark, their piping voices rose an octave or two above those of the troops as they joined discordantly in the songs, striding manfully alongside the units they served. Whenever the march continued deep into the night, they stumbled often with weariness and sometimes fell asleep in a heap at the side of the route. On these occasions the troops would swing them up onto their shoulders and carry them pickaback until the column finally bivouacked.
As the way up the high mountainside steepened, half a dozen Little Red Devils marching with the guards’ unit began clutching at the grass and bushes beside the track to make the climb easier. When two mounted officers moved past them, several of the Little Red Devils, with shouts of delight, seized the horses’ tails and clung on, borrowing the animals’ strength, with the good-humored approval of their riders, to haul themselves upward. But before long the rough track gave way to a bare rock face cut with steps waist-high to the Little Red Devils and they had to let go of the horses and scramble up the precipice on all fours. The rocky ascent became so steep that Jakob could see only the soles of the straw sandals of the prisoner ahead of him, and the singing died away as the troops began to grunt and gasp with the exertion of climbing.
Progress slowed to a crawl and delays became frequent as the steps grew narrower. Then one of the officer’s horses stumbled above them, throwing its rider, and the animal’s wildly thrashing body crashed back down the rock face, narrowly missing Jakob and his guards. It came to rest somewhere in the darkness far below and the agonized squealing of the dying horse rang eerily up the mountainside. Immediately orders echoed down the column telling the marchers to halt and sleep until first light. The weary men sank onto the narrow ledges of rock where they stood, wrapping the padded quilts from their packs about themselves. Jakob, who now carried his own sparse belongings in a bundle slung over his shoulder, followed suit, folding a blanket on the rock shelf and curling up on it with a thin quilt about his shoulders.
Within moments the steep mountainsides all around him were transformed. Every torch was extinguished and the fiery coils of the long military “dragon” melted without trace into the shadows of the slopes. Clouds drifting in front of the crescent moon cut off its feeble light and soon total darkness cloaked the Taloushan. But despite the cold, Jakob fell asleep immediately and slept fitfully until he was awakened by a long, chilling scream.
It rang hauntingly through the thin, frosty air of the mountains and Jakob sat bolt upright on the rock ledge, shivering and peering down into the blackness beneath him. In his mind’s eye the terrible image of Felicity’s last moments reappeared with great vividness: she was bent over the tree stump in her drab brown dress, her slender white neck bared beneath the falling broadsword of the executioner, and the scream seemed to be an awful echo of her dying cry. As he stared into the dark valley, the scream rang out again. It was shorter this time, ending abruptly, and Jakob wondered if the fallen horse had died among the rocks below and its last squeals of agony had wakened him.
Looking around he saw that up and down the precipitous path other men, awakened by the cold, had begun to light small fires. They squatted around these little tussocks of flame, murmuring to one another in low voices and looking up apprehensively at the ominous peaks towering over them. The black silence beyond the flickering globes of light seemed to thicken and press in around the marchers, and as though sensing this, they drew closer together around the fires.
Jakob squatted on his haunches on the narrow rock step, gazing at the comforting flames and longing for dawn to break. Once or twice his head fell forward for a moment as sleep overtook him but the memory of the scream that had awakened him so frighteningly jerked him back to consciousness again each time. When a tall Young Vanguard clad in pale, obviously looted cloth appeared at the top of the crag and began descending toward him past the spluttering fires, Jakob watched him idly, wondering what errand he might be making at that hour. As the boy came nearer, his flimsy clothing fluttered loosely about his slender body and it was then that Jakob saw that the firelight was reflecting on spotless, peach-colored gingham.
in the same moment he saw that the boy wore no cap, that his hair was not black and short but fell about his face in soft brown waves, and Felicity, when he recognized her, was not distraught and agonized as she had been at the moment of her death: she was smiling gently as she had done on that magical day in Peking when she had worn the peach gingham dress to visit the Pavilion of Eternal Spring with him at dawn. She came unhesitatingly down the stairway of rock, stepping lightly over the sharp stones until she stood before him, whole, pure, and aglow with the youthful inner radiance she had possessed when they had first met in Shanghai. Her face was calm, her expression faintly wistful but filled too with sympathy and concern. Her arms were bare, and her long, delicate hands hung relaxed at her sides, but she made no effort to reach out in his direction. Instead she stood motionless on the step above, smiling at him.
“Felicity!” Jakob breathed her name in an awed whisper, feeling elation surge through him. “Felicity!”
He wanted to stretch out and touch her but he found himself incapable of movement. For several seconds she stood and gazed down at him, her tender expression seeming wordlessly to say everything white saying nothing. Then, still smiling wistfully, she turned from him and was gone.
For an instant Jakob was engulfed by a sense of loss more devastating than he had felt at Paoshan; then this renewed feeling of grief gave way almost at once to an even greater sense of exhilaration. A tangible feeling of Felicity’s presence remained which seemed to defy the finality of that gruesome execution at Paoshan and it was as though brilliant sunshine for a moment coursed through his veins, intoxicating him and making him heady with its warmth and purity. Not daring to move, he continued to crouch, spellbound, on the freezing mountainside, staring into the blackness of the valley. Inside his head he told himself again and again that he must have been dreaming, although he felt certain that he had been awake.
The small fires still burned up and down the stairway of hewn rock and the Red Army men’s hushed voices carried clearly on the cold air. Beyond the spheres of light cast by the fires the dark, palpable silence of the mountains continued to hold them fast in its embrace, and when the rope that still hung down his back tightened suddenly, Jakob turned in surprise and looked up into the face of the young guard he had rescued from the Hsiang River. His left arm was still protected in a sling and although his face showed no flicker of sympathy, when he spoke, his
voice had lost its former edge of malice.
“Come with me,” he said curtly, jerking the rope and pulling Jakob to his feet. “I have orders to escort you to General Headquarters.”
2
Crouched beside a charcoal brazier which coly half illuminated the stone-floored inner room of a ruined mountaintop temple, Mei-ling opened a captured tin of first aid materials and took out a clean wad of cotton. Dipping it into a bowl of sugared water that she had warmed on the brazier, she held the cotton to her baby’s mouth, so that he could suck the liquid from it. But the feverish infant struggled convulsively in her arms, wailing and coughing by turns, and Mei-ling unbuttoned her tunic and opened it to the waist. A bottle of honey stood on one of two plank beds set up beside the brazier. and seating herself, she took up the scrap of cotton again, dipped it in the opened bottle and smeared honey on her bared breasts to sweeten them.
When Mei-ling pressed the baby to her, he quieted to suck at the wild honey and she relaxed and closed her eyes, surrendering herself to the quiet exquisiteness of the sensation. But the infant remained content for only a minute or so: then he began to struggle again, wailing more loudly than before. His pallid skin glistened with perspiration and although she tried to hold him firmly, he thrashed his arms and legs repeatedly. She gazed perplexedly at the baby for a moment, then patiently picked up a new fragment of cotton and began to smear more honey onto her breasts. While she was doing this a General Headquarters bodyguard led Jakob into the inner room.
“The Outside Country prisoner has been brought here as Comrade Hua Fu commanded!”
“Comrade Hua Fu has been called away to a meeting.”
Mei-ling spoke without looking up and there was a noticeable hardness in her tone when she uttered the Chinese fighting name for the German Comintern adviser. Turning her back on the men in the doorway, she dipped the cloth in the honey bottle again and resumed her task When she had finished and the baby was nuzzled quietly against her, she looked up to find the tall, bearded figure of the young English missionary staring at her from the shadows. His hands were tied in front of him and in the half-darkness she saw only his pale, intent eyes and the glint of the fire on his fair hair.
“I know nothing of Comrade Hua Fu’s orders,” she said calmly. “What were they?”
“He commanded us to fetch the Outside Country prisoner without delay.” The young bodyguard shifted uncomfortably at the missionary’s shoulder and behind him Jakob’s own guard hovered uncertainly in the doorway. “He said it was very urgent.”
“Very well. Leave him here with me. You may wait outside.”
The General Headquarters soldier motioned Jakob’s guard ahead of him and together they left the inner room. Jakob, whose feet had also been hobbled with rope so that he could not run or move quickly, remained standing in the shadows, unable to take his eyes from Mei-ling. In the dull red glow of the brazier, her face and her naked shoulders shone with the soft luminescence of polished amber. Her hair hung undressed about her cheeks and beneath classically arched brows her almond-shaped eyes were as black as jet in the firelight. She looked steadily at him, her expression neither indifferent nor curious, and in the stillness of the ancient mountain temple he suddenly felt that he was gazing not just at the calm, oval face of Mei-ling but at the eternal, tantalizing image of Oriental beauty itself. The baby slumbered fretfully in her lap and her honeyed breasts were still partially visible inside her half-closed Red Army tunic, but she gave no sign that she was aware of her semi-nakedness. When the baby woke and began to wail once more, a woman orderly in cap and belted uniform appeared silently from another chamber of the temple and Mei-ling handed the child over to her without fuss.
“Is your baby ill?” Jakob spoke hesitantly in Chinese, watching Mei-ling refasten the buttons of her tunic and slip a broad leather belt about her waist.
“The baby’s dying,” replied Mei-ling in a resigned voice. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“That’s very sad.”
“Perhaps.”
Mei-ling’s manner was coolly impersonal but there was no sign of the kind of hostility Jakob was accustomed to receive from his guards. Her unemotional detachment about the child puzzled him but he assumed she must be hiding her feelings. “I’m sorry ... that I’ve intruded here,” he said haltingly. “I don’t know why I’ve been summoned.”
“There’s no need to apologize. It will become clear when the child’s father returns. He’ll be here soon.”
Mei-Iing moved a blackened cooking pot onto the brazier and began to stir it. Close over the fire, her face became a copper-bronze color which to Jakob made her beauty seem unreal, something akin to the overemphatic, painted faces of the mud gods and goddesses that appeared to be watching and listening from shadowy niches ranged around the temple walls. Again the tranquility of the ancient chamber gave him an uncanny feeling that he was living in a waking dream, on some plane Raised above mundane reality: encountering the Chinese girl in the temple ruin among the peaks so soon after the inexplicable experience of seeing the half—waking vision of Felicity on the freezing mountainside seemed to imbue the encounter with an ethereal sense of fantasy.
“Have you forgotten that we met on a ship three years ago?” asked Jakob at last.
Mei-Iing did not reply or look up, but although she ignored the question, her manner mutely confirmed her recollection of their meeting in 1931. Keeping her eyes averted, she went on stirring the pot on the charcoal brazier, concentrating all her attention on the movement of the ladle in her hand. When at last she did speak, her tone was neutral.
“How long have you been a prisoner?”
“I was taken at Chentai in early November. My mission house was looted. I was marched to Paoshan with my family.” Jakob watched Mei-ling’s face carefully but she showed no sign of having prior knowledge. “My wife was beheaded on the hillside outside Paoshan.”
In speaking for the first time of the terrible events at Paoshan, Jakob’s voice broke slightly and Mei-ling looked up in surprise. A hint of compassion showed fleetingly in her expression — then she turned away and a silence fell in the room, broken only by the occasional spluttering of the coals in the brazier.
“If you’re cold, come nearer to the fire.”
Jakob shuffled forward two or three paces, then stopped. “I was put on trial before a mob at Paoshan. They found me ‘guilty’ of spying on the Red Army. Aren’t you frightened such an evil ‘imperialist spy’ might harm you?”
There was only a hint of irony in the inflections of his speech but she did not react to it. Instead she fetched a small bowl and a spoon and carried them to the brazier. “I’ve made ginseng Stew. Eat some. It will keep out the cold.”
She ladled steaming liquid into the bowl and turned to find Jakob had lifted his bound wrists in front of him. “You’ll have to ask the guards if I’m allowed to eat.”
Without a word she put down the bowl, took up a knife, and sawed through the plaited ropes that circled his wrists. In cutting his bonds she came close enough for him to smell the female musk of her body mingled with the faint, sweet aroma of honey, but when she put the ginseng stew in his hands she continued to avoid his eyes and moved away to seat herself on the plank bed again.
“I’m very grateful for your kindness,” said Jakob quietly and he inhaled the pungent steam rising from the bowl for a moment before dipping his spoon hungrily into the stew. “This smells very good.”
For some time he are in silence, relishing the hot, tasty food after more than three months of harsh survival rations, and Mei-ling made no attempt to interrupt. When he had finished, she took the bowl from him and washed it in a wooden bucket in a corner of the room.
“Why were you spared?” she asked, speaking over her shoulder.
“It was an accident . . . my wife was taken first . . .“Jakob’s voice faltered and died away. When he resumed, his tone was bitter. “A Kuomintang unit arrived in the nick of time — and afterward your comrades decided
I was worth more alive than dead. The price for our freedom was set at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It’s still the asking price for me. I think that’s the real reason why I was taken captive in the first place — for money.”
“That isn’t true.” Mei-Iing’s eyes grew bright although her manner remained calm and controlled. “Perhaps the action at Paoshan was hotheaded but the Red Army takes missionaries prisoner only to show the world that China will no longer allow outsiders to bring foreign doctrines to our country.”
She stood up and moved nearer to the charcoal brazier. Her eyes shone in the firelight and she stood close enough to Jakob for him to detect again the natural scents of her body. Instantly, memories of his fevered dreams of her tumbled through his mind and he took an instinctive pace toward her.
“Mei-ling, I dreamed of you many times after we met on the ship.” He spoke in a low tone, gazing wonderingly at her. The words had sprung to his lips involuntarily and he felt suddenly confused. The rush of elation which the waking-dream vision of Felicity had induced an hour earlier remained strong in him but suddenly he distrusted his still—tingling senses.
“And perhaps I’m still dreaming. I can’t really tell.”
Mei-Iing, taken aback, stared at him in her turn, her expression puzzled and surprised.
“In the dreams you were always so real, but here reality seems like a dream
His voice trailed off into a half-whisper and he looked up through the open rafters above one of the grinning god-idols. Against the starry predawn sky, the dark bulk of a neighboring crag reared over the temple. The thin crescent moon had reappeared to settle for the moment on the shoulder of the mountain and within the irregular frame of the roof rafters, nature seemed to have painted a picture of unearthly simplicity and power. Somewhere in the deep silence a brook was gurgling and Jakob fancied suddenly he could again smell the night scent of winter plum blossom on the still air.
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